GPPi publishes Afghanistan policy brief, warning of an opportunity soon to be lost

On 27 March 2012, GPPi released a policy brief on international policy in Afghanistan. Written by GPPi Fellow Philipp Rotmann, the paper is titled Afghanistan: Urgent Investments in a Long Transition. Rotmann argues that the United States, Europe and their key international partners in Afghanistan are at risk of wasting an opportunity as policymakers at home are increasingly growing tired of the conflict.

While international influence in Afghanistan and the region is limited, and while the current political strategy is far from certain to succeed, there are things the international community can and should do. In the short term, a stronger focus is required on getting ready to subordinate international military operations to the emerging political negotiations, on preparing for the presidential elections in 2014 and on managing local power transitions as a result of International Security Assistance Force redeployments. To make a sustainably stable future more likely, the international community needs to deliver a truly impressive and carefully designed follow-up on the decisions made last December in Bonn.

The decisions being made in the coming weeks and months must meet a double challenge: to break or at least slow the cycle of fear that grips the country, and to avoid building the next series of well-intentioned political traps for the international community by a new emphasis on thoughtful analysis and program design. This is particularly important now, as today’s decisions in the run-up to the NATO summit in May and the Tokyo donors conference will predetermine many of the assistance mechanisms that are going to last far beyond 2014.